Sunday, June 05, 2016

Today watched the Warcraft movie and I see in Wikipedia and many other places negative critics. However I was with a guy who never played WoW and both of us enjoyed this movie. Just as was the case with the all praised Star Wars 7, my personal opinion is completely opposite of what the critics said. SW7 was big disappointment for me, but somehow almost all of the critics rated it highly. Now about the Warcraft movie, I am not sure what makes it a flop, so I'd recommend see for yourself and don't pay too much attention to clueless critics.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

This popped up in my news feed some time ago, but I've seen it today discussed on Reddit again, so I thought to share it. Its essentially coin-sized quartz (something like glass) disk, that can store loads of data. Its on stage "proof of concept", but judging by the evolution of other inventions, likely it will turn to be the norm in some not very far future.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

In this article I found something pretty fascinating, possible Neanderthal building and on top of that the age of it 175,000 years is even more incredible. Also this article is being discussed on Reddit

Sunday, May 22, 2016

I wrote time ago about finding of preserved mammoth carcasses and then there were talks for de-extinction of the species, but time passed and there were not much practical progress, but I still look around for updates and news on the topic.

Today this article looks again into the issue of the cloning of extinct animals and attempt to recreate the Pleistocene ecosystem with Woolly Mammoths included.

Comparison of a woolly mammoth (left) and an American mastodon (right)

While browsing today's Reddit front page, I stumbled on curious topic, "What is the oldest surviving piece of music" and I thought that it would be interesting hear how sounded the music somewhere closer to its roots. So the Reddit Research Institute pointed very fast to the answer and I found it rather fascinating.

The 2200 year old Seikilos Epitaph (direct link to the music) is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. There also is Hurrian hymn n6, which is 3400 years old but there are some issues with the reconstruction, however we can get somewhat the idea of what used to sound like that melody.